Peacebuilding, Citizenship, and Identity / Transnational Migration and Education (PDF)

As communities around the world continue to
attract international immigrants, schools have become centers for learning how
to engage with people's multiple ethnic and cultural origins. Ethnocultural
minority immigrant students carry diverse histories and perspectives-which can
serve as resources for critical reflection about social conflicts. These
students' identities need to be included in the curriculum so that diversity
and conflictual issues can be openly discussed.

Immigrant children embody the many issues
confronting today's youth in a global, transnational, and interconnected world.
Drawing on in-depth empirical case studies, this book explores the classroom
experiences of these children. Varying in social and cultural capital, they
contend with social and cultural conflict influenced not only by global
politics and familial prejudices, but also by structural exclusion in Western
curricula.

In democratic peacebuilding education, diverse
students express divergent points of view in open, inclusive dialogue.
Negotiating their multiple identities, such children develop skills for
managing and responding to that conflict, thereby acquiring tools to challenge
dominant hegemonic systems of oppression and control later in life.

In vivid classroom depictions, the reader learns
of many outcomes: Young, quiet, and marginalized voices were heard. Dialogic
pedagogies encouraged cooperation among students and strengthened class
communities. What is more, the implicit and explicit curricula implemented in
these diverse classrooms served to shape how students interpreted democracy in
multicultural Canada.

The diverse experiences of the young people and
teachers in this book illuminate the innermost landscapes of multicultural
classrooms, providing deep insight into the social and cultural challenges and
opportunities that ethnocultural minority children experience at school.